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<title>Using as: HPPA Syntax</title>

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<a name="HPPA-Syntax"></a>
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Next: <a href="HPPA-Floating-Point.html#HPPA-Floating-Point" accesskey="n" rel="next">HPPA Floating Point</a>, Previous: <a href="HPPA-Options.html#HPPA-Options" accesskey="p" rel="prev">HPPA Options</a>, Up: <a href="HPPA_002dDependent.html#HPPA_002dDependent" accesskey="u" rel="up">HPPA-Dependent</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="AS-Index.html#AS-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<a name="Syntax-12"></a>
<h4 class="subsection">9.13.3 Syntax</h4>
<p>The assembler syntax closely follows the HPPA instruction set
reference manual; assembler directives and general syntax closely follow the
HPPA assembly language reference manual, with a few noteworthy differences.
</p>
<p>First, a colon may immediately follow a label definition.  This is
simply for compatibility with how most assembly language programmers
write code.
</p>
<p>Some obscure expression parsing problems may affect hand written code which
uses the <code>spop</code> instructions, or code which makes significant
use of the <code>!</code> line separator.
</p>
<p><code>as</code> is much less forgiving about missing arguments and other
similar oversights than the HP assembler.  <code>as</code> notifies you
of missing arguments as syntax errors; this is regarded as a feature, not a
bug.
</p>
<p>Finally, <code>as</code> allows you to use an external symbol without
explicitly importing the symbol.  <em>Warning:</em> in the future this will be
an error for HPPA targets.
</p>
<p>Special characters for HPPA targets include:
</p>
<p>&lsquo;<samp>;</samp>&rsquo; is the line comment character.
</p>
<p>&lsquo;<samp>!</samp>&rsquo; can be used instead of a newline to separate statements.
</p>
<p>Since &lsquo;<samp>$</samp>&rsquo; has no special meaning, you may use it in symbol names.
</p>



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